Class Summary

This class has taught me a ton about social media and how important it can be for any business these days. Before I took this class I noticed that all big businesses have thriving social media accounts on all networks. This made me realize that running accounts for your company are a very big deal in today’s technology advancing world and by taking this class it made me further understand how much work and how important social media really is. So, my view has not really changed but I now have a much better understanding of social media as a whole.

By creating a hypothetical business (SK Surfboards) for the semester, I got actual practice of what controlling social media sites for a business is really like. I learned that your business can experiment with tons of different things, whether that’s running a sales promotion or just developing customer relations. It was really fun for me to research and tryout all of these different aspects of running a business. In doing this, I had to realize what was going to work for my business and close to the end I started to get the feel for how I would want to approach things. I would say that running the Facebook/Instagram accounts for my business were the most enjoyable part for me. This gave me real world experience that will benefit me in the future and the fact that I got to market surfboards made it even better. Surfing is my favorite hobby and being able to practice social media marketing with a surf company made it simply amazing. In the end, this class for sure gave me a better understanding of how to successfully develop a business and I came to realize all the hard work/little details that goes into it.

In taking this class, I learned how to create success within your social media. With experience and practice I found that the first step is knowing your target market. Things will come a lot easier once you know who specifically who you are reaching out to and without this you would just be wasting your time. Another thing you have to keep in mind is that there are numerous other businesses out there trying to market to the same people you are, so you must keep up with your competition. I realized this after modeling my account after countless other ones that are involved in the same industry.

I would say one of the most important parts I got out of this practice in this class was how you must always stay on top of things and be consistent. Whether this was just keeping up with assignments or constantly keeping an eye and posting on the social media sites. Without consistency you may start to loose people, which isn’t good if you are trying to make it in the real world.

 Over the last couple of years, I have been deciding on what I want to pursue in life and what path to take. The main reason I signed up for this class was because I was thinking about majoring in marketing or more specifically social media marketing. This class was really fun for me and it made me realize that this is something I will probably try to pursue through my college education. I learned a ton through the class and I will use the vital information for future classes or even the real world when I get that far.
Thanks to everyone for the awesome experience and class!
Cheers,
-Shawn Kaufman

Tools for Business

I think my business will require to be constantly involved in social media. So, updating it daily on networks such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter will be necessary. Since it is a local surf shop it will be a good thing to constantly remind people of it, in order to draw them in.

I think the google drive system would be a very nice place to start organizing the future for the social media marketing of my business. I am already very comfortable with working google drive and you can easily share your thoughts/data with coworkers or anyone you want.

How I would outline google drive for the next month:
Week 1: Attention grabbing photo ideas
              Promotion dates, such as sales or special deals
Week 2: Outline more appealing photos to post, with possible team riders using the product
              Get feedback from coworkers on what special promotions to use
Week 3 and 4: Repeat process of photos being posted
                        Decide on time and day of week for promotion (with help from others)

This serves as the basis of marketing for the shop, which it's main goal is to attract customers to the shop. I would repeat this process for the time being and google drive is the best way to store all these thoughts and ideas.

Week 16B

Blogs I commented on

Micheal Fanghella

Sonya Mcarthur

Michael Phillips

Week 16A: Reviewing Class

After creating my hypothetical surf shop business for this semester I have realized that the two best social media platforms for me are Facebook and Instagram. These are the two that I put the most work into and have become the most comfortable with. In my opinion these are the two most important platforms to be involved in these days, especially Instagram since practically everyone has it.
I have definitely enjoyed using an Instagram business account and I would say this is my favorite social media network. I have had Instagram for awhile now, so I feel pretty confident in posting pictures that people will like. Overall I believe this is the most effective way to market my company to the people that I want.
Instagram can serve as the best way to post on a daily use pattern. Once you get the swing of things, coming up with ideas of what to post becomes easy. With that said, you must keep up the flow of your posts so the viewers don't forget about your business.
One social media site that I learned would benefit me is youtube. This is a platform that would be very effective, without having to use it on a daily basis. I can just post a video maybe once a week and this still works to my advantage.

Week 15: Google Analysis

After searching through Google analytics, I found that it has many benefits and can help your business understand what they are doing right or wrong.
The fist one that I thought would benefit my business is simply the total page views. This would give me an idea of how many people are looking at my page and to see how many of those people actually go on to buy something. With this information I could experiment a little bit, in order to realize what needs to be done to draw in viewers.
Another part of the Google analytics that I would use for my company would be frequency of visits. This allows you to see how many sessions were generated for a certain percentage of your audience. With this tool you will be able to tell if you are getting people to come back and with my local business it would be important for people to visit more than just once.
The last aspect of Google analytics that I really liked is time spent on site, which would tell me how long these people are really staying on the website. This is important because I could think I'm doing well with views but not realize that people are only staying for a short period of time. In the end, if people are not fully engaging in my website then I won't be able to sell them on my product.

Week 14: Advertisements

Here are the three ads I created:

All of these ads serve a purpose in reaching my target market. First off, I tried to include images of my own that would catch peoples eyes, mainly people who enjoy to surf. 

The first ad basically describes what my business is with a cool picture, basically to inform anyone who isn't familiar with it already. The second post is a call to action by trying to urge the viewer by providing a 20% off coupon. The last post is another picture I found very cool that would be catchy to ones eye. This post also includes a link to my website, so once the picture draws them in then they will go to the site and hopefully make some purchases. 

All of these made the most sense for my hypothetical business in todays world. 

Week 13B

In todays busy society filled with advertising, I believe that incorporating an appealing design is key to getting people to even notice. Personally, I don't really even notice an ad anymore unless they include some really cool photo or have something that jumps out at me.

For my business I would include a lot of catchy surfing images that contain a lot of color, in order to get people to even look at the ad. I would start with a banner ad that has a really nice shot of a wave, simply to get the viewers to click on that. I would prefer to get my ad on surfline.com, because this is a website that my target market is constantly using. Also I think it would be a good idea to try and get a lot of my ads out there so that people will be persuaded to go to the in store location.

The two main tactics I would incorporate into my Facebook ads include call to action and visuals. By having a visual out there the viewer is way more likely to stop and look at it, as opposed to an ad with a bunch of words. With that said, the image must be very appealing, otherwise its no better than a list of words. The other tactic I find valuable is call to action. This strategy adds a strong sense of urgency to who ever is looking at the post. This way I can say things such as: "Buy now and get 50% off your next purchase", which can be a very successful way to gain your target market.